RV Appliance and 12V Repair in Conroe: Fridges, Furnaces, Converters

Appliances and 12V electrical are where a lot of “the rig just doesn’t work” calls end up. Most repairs run $150 to $900, and the honest first question on every call is repair or replace, answered by diagnosis, not a guess.

What we repair on site

• Refrigerators: not cooling, cooling poorly in summer heat, control board faults, igniter and gas valve issues, propane venting.
• Furnaces: will not ignite, blower faults, sail switch problems, blocked burner tubes.
• Converters and chargers: batteries that never fully charge, a cooling fan that has quit, output faults.
• Batteries: load testing, replacement, corroded terminals and connections.
• 12V wiring and fuses: the small faults that make a whole system look dead.

The propane side, and Texas licensing

A furnace, a water heater’s gas side, and most absorption fridges run on propane, and propane work in Texas is regulated even though general RV coach repair is not. The Railroad Commission of Texas requires a Category M certification to install, service, or repair recreational vehicle LP-gas containers, appliances, and piping. Any tech who touches your propane system should be able to show that certification on request, not just claim insurance covers it.

What things cost

Same numbers as the pricing page. Failed cooling units on absorption fridges (recognizable by an ammonia smell or yellow staining on the tubing) are the clear exception where replacement, not repair, is the honest recommendation.

Why appliances fail the way they do here

Heat overloads absorption cooling. Absorption refrigerators lose real cooling capacity as ambient temperature climbs, and a Texas summer afternoon on a rig with weak roof vent airflow is close to the design limit even with nothing broken. Cleaning the cooling fins on the back of the unit and confirming the roof vent fan is working often solves more than any part swap.

Storage-yard idle time hides converter and battery problems. A rig that sits for months can have a converter quietly not charging, or a battery slowly sulfating, and nobody finds out until the rig is needed and the lights will not come on. A pre-trip check catches this before it strands you at the lake.

Storms and surges hit boards. Montgomery County sits in the path of Gulf hurricanes, and outages like the ones that followed Hurricane Beryl in July 2024 create the exact power-restoration surges that damage converters, control boards, and fridge boards. If more than one board died at once, a surge is the likely cause, and we test each one separately.

Repair or replace, appliance by appliance

Refrigerators: repair when the issue is an element, thermistor, igniter, or control board on a unit that still shows no ammonia smell or yellow staining on the cooling-unit tubing. Replace, or accept a replacement conversation, when the cooling unit itself has failed; that is not a field-repairable part.

Furnaces: nearly always repairable. Sail switches, igniter boards, and blower motors are all serviceable parts, and a full furnace replacement is rare unless the unit is very old and multiple components have failed together.

Converters: repair or replace depending on whether the fault is a specific component (a failed fan, a blown fuse inside the case) or the unit’s core charging circuitry. A converter that will not hold a stable output under test is a replacement, not a repair.

Batteries: replacement is the norm once a load test shows a cell has genuinely lost capacity, rather than a temporary symptom of a bad connection or a weak converter. We test before recommending new batteries, since a corroded terminal can mimic a dead battery for a fraction of the cost.

Where we work

On site across Conroe, Montgomery, Willis, The Woodlands, Magnolia, New Caney, and Huntsville. The refrigerator not cooling, furnace not working, and batteries dead or not charging problem pages walk through the checks you can run yourself first.